Dance
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As Sophie Ellis-Bextor‘s 2001 disco pop classic “Murder on the Dancefloor” continues its rise up the charts — sitting at No. 57 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 4 on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs — on the power of its Saltburn synch, the track is getting extra momentum Friday (Feb. 9) via a remix by […]
Kaskade will replace Tiësto as the Super Bowl’s first ever in-game DJ, with the latter producer dropping out of the gig earlier Thursday (Feb. 8), citing a “personal family emergency.” Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Hours after Tiësto dropped out, Kaskade — real name: Ryan Raddon — […]
This past New Year’s Eve (Dec. 30-31) hordes of dance fans descended on the NOS Events Center in San Bernardino, Calif., for two days of traditional year-end partying. Highlights from the Insomniac Events-produced festival included Porter Robinson playing as the clocked ticked to 2024, a DJ set from British legends Nero, a space bass frenzy […]
Pennsylvania’s Elements Festival will be back for 2024 with a lineup of more than 100 dance acts including future bass star Illenium, a redux set from Kaskade, psychedelic bass powerhouse Liquid Stranger, the ever vibey Bob Moses, house fav BLOND:ISH, along with Slander, Barclay Crenshaw, Wreckno and many more. See the complete phase one lineup below.
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The camping festival happens August 9-11 in Long Pond, Pennsylvania, roughly two hours from both Philadelphia and New York City. Tickets are on sale now.
The music will take place across four stages (each named after, naturally, an element), with the festival also offering art cars, theme camps, interactive performances, large-scale art installations and a wellness lineup featuring yoga, aromatherapy, dance, comedy, sound baths and workshops.
The independently operated Elements was founded by Brett Herman and Timothy Monkiewicz, with the first edition taking place in Brooklyn in 2013 before moving to another rural Pennsylvania location and ultimately landing in Long Pond.
“The genesis of Elements has always been to constantly evolve, becoming more grand, more weird, and more wild each year,” Herman says in a statement. “Fans can expect a number of revamped accommodation offerings and more opportunities to participate and become immersed in the experience.”
Elements Music & Arts Festival 2024: Phase One Lineup
5am TrioAhadadreamAusteriaAzzeccaBarclay CrenshawBlanke: ÆON MODEBLOND:ISHBob MosesBoogie TBoogie T.RioCanablissChris Lake b2b ClooneeCloZeeCool CustomerDimensionDisco LinesDr. FreschEli FolaExcisionIlleniumINZOIt’s murphJustin MartinKaskade (Redux)Lee ReynoldsLespecialLightcodeLiquid StrangerLSDREAMMarbsMarvel YearsMatrodaMikey LionOf The TreesPorkyRome in SilverSakaSlanderSlander Presents: Before DawnSpace WizardSub FocusSullivan King b2b KayzoSunSquabiTape BThe FlooziesTownship RebellionTroyBoiTVBOOVNSSA b2b NalaWalker & RoyceWrecknoZingara
After years of of the dance community firing off hot takes on how the Grammys’ dance/electronic fields didn’t quite get the nominees — and occasionally the winners — right, the realm has been uniquely quiet since the close of the ceremony on Sunday.
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This general calm (minus a few predictable naysayers) suggests a mutual agreement that the 2024 Grammys finally, more or less, nailed dance/electronic music.
This success is largely due to the best pop dance recording award, newly introduced in 2024 to honor dance music that crosses over with pop, while also freeing up space in the dance/electronic recording category for more traditional thump-thump, womp-womp, boot-and-cats dance/electronic music.(Albeit more traditional dance/electronic music that’s still, most often, very commercially popular.)
You couldn’t have come up with two more apt figureheads for these factions than Kylie Minogue and Skrillex, with the former winning the pop dance Grammy for her culture-penetrating “Padam Padam” and the latter winning for his widely beloved bass bomb “Rumble,” a collaboration with U.K. grime MC Flowdan and Fred again.., who both also received awards for the win.
It is, of course, difficult to say what the nominee field would have looked like this year if pop dance hadn’t been introduced, but it’s almost certain it wouldn’t have represented the both sonic ends of the dance/electronic world thoroughly. (Racial and gender representation is a different matter: Flowdan was the only person of color nominated in the fields and Romy was the only female producer, encapsulating the dance category’s persistent issue with nominating mostly straight, white men. This issue was particularly acute in 2024, given the big four categories were dominated by women, including three winning queer women.)
Without the extra space provided to dance with the new category, it’s possible the dance/electronic recording category’s most left-of-center nominee, Aphex Twin’s “Blackbox Life Record 21F”, wouldn’t have made the cut. Or maybe only one David Guetta song instead of two would have been nominated.
It’s also possible that “Padam Padam” might have beat “Rumble,” the victory of which is particularly important given the spotlight it puts on grime, a sonic and cultural phenomenon in the U.K. but not yet a commercial force in the U.S. “I think you can put a bit more respect on the [grime] name,” Flowdan told Cracked Magazine following his win, “because in certain areas I feel that the music or the genre or the culture’s kind of downplayed as if it’s not something that’s really influential.”
What’s almost certain, though, is that like in so many years past, without pop dance, the nominee field would have likely ended up being just kind of odd, with dance-oriented pop stars like Minogue potentially up against an avant-garde electronic artist like Aphex Twin. This issue was vividly demonstrated last year, when Beyoncé was up against Bonobo, Kaytranada, Diplo, Rufus du Sol and ODESZA when her “Break My Soul” was nominated for (and won) best dance/electronic recording.
In the category’s early years, the nominee field commonly included artists like Minogue (who won the award in 2004), as well as fellow dance-leaning pop greats Madonna, Cher, Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake. It started more frequently rewarding electronic-world producers like The Chemical Brothers and Daft Punk in the late ’00s. A few years after that, the category was taken over by a new strain of pop-leaning dance music, EDM, for an era when mainstage bangers by artists like The Chainsmokers competed against more underground acts like Riton — exacerbating the issue that ultimately resulted in the addition of the new category.
Competition between such different artists may have been technically fair, but it never totally made sense. But this year, the pop dance category eradicated the strange-bedfellows phenomenon that’s plagued the dance/electronic recording category since it was introduced to the awards in 1998.
The pop dance category not only made a formal space for producers like Guetta, whose work generally has major crossover with pop, but, by awarding Minogue in particular, pulled off the neat trick of returning an artist like her — one whose work is so often inspired by and at home in the club world — to the dance field where she rightly belongs. Minogue is as much of a dance act as Skrillex, and this year, finally, they didn’t have to fight for space or recognition.
U2 had a busy Sunday night (Feb. 4). In addition to giving most of the world the first extended glimpse at the eye-popping visuals from their ongoing residency series at Las Vegas’ Sphere during a remote performance on the 66th annual Grammy Awards, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famers also dropped a dancefloor-ready remix […]
Fred again..‘s Actual Life 3 (January 1 – September 23, 2022) now has an actual Grammy, winning the award for best dance/electronic album at Sunday’s (Feb. 4) Grammy Premiere Ceremony in Los Angeles. The British producer in fact quickly became a two-time Grammy winner, also getting an award for best dance/electronic recording for his work […]
“Padam Padam” further cemented its juggernaut status Sunday (Feb. 4), winning the new best pop dance recording Grammy during the 2024 Grammys Premiere Ceremony in Los Angeles. This year is the first time the category has been included in the awards, with “Padam Padam” now the category’s first-ever winner. The song beat Calvin Harris and […]
Hear the victory? Skrillex, Fred again.. and Flowdan‘s 2023-defining “Rumble” won the 2024 Grammy for best/dance electronic record at Sunday’s (Feb. 4) Premiere Ceremony in Los Angeles. Taking the stage alone to accept the award, a sharp-dressed Skrillex noted that “for anyone out there that wants to make music, the best advice I’ve ever gotten […]
After a breakthrough year, Dom Dolla received his first-ever Grammy nomination for best remix recording of his remix of “New Gold” by the Gorillaz and Tame Impala, and to celebrate, he sat down with Billboard‘s Katie Bain to discuss how he found out about the nod. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See […]